


Future Talk

by graphospasm



Category: YuYu Hakusho, 幽☆遊☆白書 | YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:39:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graphospasm/pseuds/graphospasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being stabbed to death on her 20th birthday, Dani is faced with an unexpected proposition: Be sent peacefully to the afterlife, or enter the world of Yu Yu Hakusho and use her knowledge of the future to prevent the impending apocalypse. Koenma tells Dani she was chosen for this mission at random. Koenma is a liar, and Dani is in way over her head. OCxHiei.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death for My Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> The first paragraphs of this fanfiction mercilessly satire bad Yu Yu Hakusho fanfiction. You’ve been warned. It’s pretty bad. Grammatically inclined, beware.
> 
> This story is nearing rough-draft completion on FFnet. On AO3 I hope to post a refined version of the story, with sharper prose and a cleaner plot (subplots, thou art as numerous as thou art stupid… why must I love thee??).
> 
> The title of this chapter is named for the Say Anything song of the same name.

_"I love you." She whispered, violet orbs filing with tears. "But... I don't know if you love me. You abandnoed me for Yukina. I know she's you're sister, but..."  
_

 _Hiei swept the emotionally fragille physically mighty longhaired beauty into his chiseled arms._

_"You are the only one for me!" He exclaimed, crimson hues bright with love. "Yukina means nothing to me compared to you!"_

_She sniffed against his strong manly shoulder. "Even though I'm halfdemon halfhuman with a vampire for a grandmother?" She asked tearrfully._

_"Yes." He sollemnly intoned, wiping her bangs (deep raven purpl-black with blood red highlights) out of her bright blue and purple and green rainstorm-colored eyes. "I would give up my life for you. You are beautifull and strong and I will protect you the way you're dead parents never could. You have had such a tragic life. Let me be your night in shinning armor, Amora Lestina Hathway."_

_"Oh, yes." She cried, and with a giggle she added "Not that I need protecting. I'm the ruler of the demon world! That tournament was a cinch, and your my king!"  
_

 _And with a smile Hiei kissed her because he had never met anyone as perfect as Amora before and it goes without saying that they lived happily ever after._

_The End._

As I picked my way through an author's note that was longer than the fic's final chapter, I felt my temples begin to pound.  


How the shit do people write this swill, let alone have the balls to put it on the internet? I thought as I opened the review box. With hands sweaty from clutching a plastic computer mouse for more than an hour (at one hundred and ten chapters, this fic had been long, pointless, and painful to get through; clutching at the mouse in desperation was to be expected) I typed out a review. A scathing one.  


_This fic is a bastardization of both Yu Yu Hakusho and Hiei's character,_ I wrote. _I can't even begin to count the ways this fic is bad, but let me try. The word 'orb' is not a substitute for 'eye', and neither is 'hue'. 'Hue', for the record, means 'color,' not eye, and "your" and "you're" are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT WORDS. Your dialogue is not formatted correctly, either, so pick up a freaking book and see how it's really done! Also, Hiei would never act like this because he would never A), talk that much, or B), talk in such a poetic, romance-novel sort of way. He's not tender and sweet; he's gruff and straightforward! Plus, no Mary Sue like yours would ever interest him! She's too chipper and bubbly, and that tragic past of hers? HA! Don't make me laugh. Hiei’s own past puts hers to shame. What makes you think that aqua eyes and that god-awful hair color could ever be pretty or natural? And her HERITAGE: nothing screams MARY SUE like having a vampire for a grandma. Vampires aren't even in YYH canon! And the worst atrocity? YOU SAY THAT HIEI DOESN'T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YUKINA. You and your story have major issues to work out. Grow the hell up and get the hell out of that fantasy world of yours, please, and come back to the REAL world of Yu Yu Hakusho.  
_

My mouse hovered over the 'submit' button for a long time before I moved for the delete key, holding it down until my entire work of angry criticism disappeared from existence letter by letter. It took many moments of deep breathing to get into a (barely remotely) state of Zen, but once I could look at the review box without grinding my teeth or spouting off profanities I began to type anew.  


_Great job sticking with this fic until the end!_ I typed. _You write fairly well, but all of us can improve more. For instance, you use the word 'hue' instead of 'eye', but 'hue' actually means 'color,' not 'eye!' Whoopsies! I've made that mistake before, too! Also, about the format of your dialogue..._  


After forcing out that more neutral dose of helpful criticism, I clicked 'submit.' The familiar orange writing telling me that the review would take a while to show up made me sigh. How long had I been doing this pointless, endless perusal of bad fanfiction? Three years? Four? I was too lazy to actually check the date on my profile, but I nonetheless wondered what drove me to subject myself to such bad writing and then make nice about it year after year after year.  


I clicked the author's profile link on a whim and was assaulted by the typical "If-you're-the-one-teen-who-doesn't-smoke-pot,-copy-and-paste-this-into-your-profile!" kind of junk. Scrolling through it proved to be a forty-second process, one that led me to author’s fifteen posted fics. I lingered on the review counts. The atrocious 'Bleeding Heart Felt Love' I had just reviewed had two hundred giggling comments. The discovery made my heart sink. My own fic (singular; I only had one) had less than fifty reviews ranging from the constructive to the rude to the infuriatingly vague. Sure, my fic only had a dozen chapters or so at this point, but it was better written and had a more original plot than what I’d just read... right?  


_I'm minoring in creative writing,_ I thought. _Of course my writing is better than this._  


Pulling my backpack from under my seat, I stood and slung the bag over my shoulders. Heavy textbooks painfully tapped against my spine as I reached for my cane; with a whistle I headed for the library doors.  


"Happy birthday, Dani!"  


I shot a smile at the boy behind the library checkout counter. He, like me, was a second year college student and a fellow music major, and we shared a Japanese class to boot. We had been friends since freshman orientation, ever since he had carried me up a flight of stairs after someone had stolen my cane (lots of people did that before I told them it wasn't just an eccentric accessory and that my left foot and calf were actually shriveled from a birth defect).  


"Thanks, dude," I replied, smiling.  


"How old did you turn?"  


"Twenty, so no, I'm not an alcohol source yet, David."  


"Dammit," he swore, snapping his fingers in mock disappointment. His expression turned from amiability to confusion when I signed the computer check-in list. "Hey, I thought you had a laptop."  


"It broke," I said. "Damned keyboard quit working on me."  


"That must suck! Hope it gets fixed soon."  


"Me, too."  


"You gonna be all right walking home?" he said, glancing at the big glass doors leading outside. Night had fallen an hour or two earlier.  


"Should be." I looked at the watch on my right wrist and frowned. "Gotta go pretty quick, though. Mom's supposed to call me tonight."  


"Be careful out there," he said. "You sure you don't wanna call Campus Safety and have them drive you home? It'd be faster." He reached for the phone on the checkout counter, but I shook my head.  


"I'll be fine." I tried not to look peeved. I hated being babied. "See you tomorrow."  


"See you," David said as I walked away, and after giving him one last cheerful smile I left the building.  


The sweet spring air felt damp in my mouth, and my cane slipped over slick cement. It had been raining earlier that day, making walking around campus both treacherous and a pain, but I didn't really mind. I liked the feel of the breeze as it ruffled through my unbound hair, the feel of the pavement beneath my good foot as I walked. There wasn't much on my mind. I had reviewed a story that needed it, my homework was done, my application to an ultra-competitive composition workshop with noteworthy guest professor was finished, my mother and my best friend were going to call me that night in my dorm room because it was my birthday...  


The way back to the dorm took me past the athletic track. With a wry smile I stopped to look at the red paving material and the white stripes differentiating the running lanes. A train whistle blew in the distance.  


"Hmph," I huffed. “Never gonna be me out there.” I squeezed the aluminum grip of my cane tight. My bum leg had kept me from sports since my birth, but that didn't matter to me much. At least I had music, and writing.

Far away but coming closer, the train whistle blew again, but this time it sounded... odd, somehow, and I felt a chill make the hair on my arms stand up. A higher, more desperate sound undercut the typical shrill keen of wheels on track; I assumed I was hearing things.

"Aw, shut up," I said to the annoying whistle and its odd undertone, but then the screaming sound continued on its own even after the train had passed. Alarm blurred the edges of my vision and adrenaline pumped as I recognized the scream as...

—was that a person?

It took me a moment to remember how to move. With growing apprehension I trekked across the track, walking toward the bleachers at the far side of the field as if pulled there by a magnet. I flinched when the screaming started again, no train-sounds masking it this time, and when the scream abruptly cut off I tried to move a little faster, straining my neck as I looked around for the sound's source.  


I spotted something moving in the shadows beneath the bleachers. I held my breath as I approached the crawlspace under the seats, peering into darkness through narrowed eyes and knit brows. As my eyes adjusted to the shadows I made out two vague shapes, one pinned and one pinning. The one on top straddled the other's waist, holding her hands above her head with one strong arm, and it took me a moment to recognize the pinned person as one of my classmates—a girl whose long blonde hair was mussed and fanning around her as she lay sprawled on the ground, mouth opened wide as she let out another terrified screech and twisted her body hard.  


For a moment I couldn’t figure out what was happening. My brain didn’t want to make the connection. But then the man kneeling atop my classmate fumbled with the button on his fly, and I knew what was going on. I took two steps into the under-the-bleachers darkness, raised my cane, and hopped forward on my good foot. My walking stick connected with the side of his head with a resounding 'thwack'; he grunted, went limp, and slumped forward. My classmate shoved her assailant away with an anguished cry—for the life of me, I could not recall her name as she ran past and collapsed to her knees on the pavement.  


I turned around. The young woman wretched, expelling the contents of her stomach.  


"You okay?" I asked, realizing as I spoke that my feeble words were totally inadequate.  


To my surprise, however, my classmate looked up at me with tear-streaked eyes and whispered: "Thank you, thank you, oh my god, thank you."  


I held out a hand, hoping to help her get to her feet. "Let's get out of here and call the cops," I said as she reached for me, but then her eyes went wide, so wide, and her face went from grateful to horrified in a blink of misplaced time. A low moan and a curse drifted through the air, and as I slowly turned around I saw a large black shape lurch toward me.  


Fire blossomed down my side, then, and someone—was it me making that horrible sound? Was I the one screaming?  


I stumbled backward, saved from falling only by the grace of my cane. I looked down. The handle of the knife between my ribs glistened like oiled leather. When I drew breath, blood bloomed across the pale pink fabric of my t-shirt in a sweet-smelling stain.  


My classmate let out a wail. I heard her feet pound away into the night. My killer pulled the weapon from my burst heart and ran, too.  


I put a hand to the wound as I watched him go. My fingers came away black, the color of my blood lost to the dark. I fell to my knees. I was cold. I was getting colder.  


My last protests were born as thoughts as my reality disappeared in a numbing rush: _But today is my birthday._


	2. It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani meets a powerful (and previously fictional) ally and learns of her role in events to come.

To say that I woke up would be a lie. I felt like I was being born. 

The darkness of death fit me like a glove. Death’s warmth cradled me in unseen arms and whispered in a voice I could not hear to lay still, accept this, you're home now. I did not struggle against my death. I let it drift feathery fingers over my eyelids and lips. I think I may have smiled. There was no pain.

No pain for long, anyway. What seemed like mere moments later (although it could very well have been years) a white coin of light pierced the dark in the distance. Harsh radiance bathed my face. The arms holding me recoiled from the light as a slender ribbon of luminescence descended from the small, distant sun. A fishhook in the dark, it wound around my form and yanked me upward, callously, into a sea of light.

I may have screamed, but I can't remember.

~

Bright light (light of a more mundane nature, one that smacked of fluorescent bulbs) woke me from an actual sleep. I struggled to sit upright. Clean, starched sheets rustled about my waist as I blinked like an owl at my surroundings.

What I saw did not make sense.

Stretching on either side of me were beds: empty, old-fashioned hospital cots made up with simple sheets and single pillows. No one slept in the beds. Indifferent white walls, tiled floors, and high ceilings gave the impression of immaculate cleanliness. From the tall windows lining the long hall, darkness pressed. It seemed to be nighttime, but the blackness was so opaque that I could see nothing beyond the glass. That felt stranger than the empty beds. If this was a hospital, surely city lights would turn pure dark into mere dim. 

The hospital was also quiet. Maddeningly, unstoppably graveyard quiet.

I pushed the sheets off my body and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Someone had dressed me, I noticed, in a vaguely Asian-looking robe made all of white, like an incredibly lightweight kimono with no obi. I looked for my cane but did not see it. I had no shoes, which bothered me when I stood because the tile was cold beneath the soles of my feet.

My... feet?

I looked down. 

My left foot stood as whole and hale as my right.

A moment later I remembered being stabbed. My strong legs collapsed, pitching me back onto the bed. I fumbled with the tie of my robe and wrenched it open, bearing my breasts and stomach and ribs to the world. To my surprise I saw no wound, no bandages, no blood, simply pale skin stretching over bone and the tracery of blue veins beneath.

I retied the robe with shaking hands. _Must not have been as bad a wound as I thought,_ I thought. _But if that's the case, why am I still in a hospital? Mom must be worried sick. I didn't get to call her. Is she here? Did she fly out to take care of me?_

I tried not to remember the way the blood had looked on my hand, or the way it had soaked into the fabric of my shirt.

 _And how did they fix my foot?_ I thought, but I pushed the subject aside. I didn't want to know.

Standing again, I took a few steps forward. I still walked with a limp, not trusting my new flesh to hold my weight, but I experienced no pain or sudden bout of sickness as I headed away from my bed. 

_I'm walking,_ I thought. _This is... weird._

The hall stretched long. Just as I realized that I couldn’t make out the end of the room—that the room reached on and on into infinite nothing—a wooden door appeared before me. I stared, blinking. The door had simply... materialized. There was no way I could have missed it. It was as though the door had been waiting for me to look for a door before coming into view.

“I must be tired,” I murmured, trying not to think too hard about the slew of oddities hurtling in my direction. I reached for the door. “I must be…”

The brass knob felt cold under my hand. I twisted, then pushed the door open. When I saw what lay beyond, I went still.

The word 'barren' came to mind, as did 'wasteland'. Buildings sat broken and toppled like scattered building blocks, blocks tossed about in the wake of an uncaring giant of a child. Chunks of cement lay like fallen boulders. Green clouds boiled in an orange sky. Wind that burned with heat and chemicals stung my cheeks.

I let the door fall shut. The lock engaged with a gentle click. 

"Horrible, isn't it?" said a voice.

I turned. Behind me stood a man much taller than I. He had long, scraggly brown hair, expressive honey-colored eyes, and tattered clothing that looked as if it came out of a samurai film. Despite his bedraggled appearance, I knew exactly who he was.

"Koenma?" I asked, eyes alighting on the 'Jr' tattooed upon his forehead. I shook my head. "You're not real."

"Oh, I assure you, I am," he replied, and he snorted. "Well, maybe not in your reality, at any rate. I'm only 2D where you come from."

I said nothing. Koenma sighed.

"Come with me," he said. "I can explain everything."

"Okay," came my automatic response. He turned to go. I limped along after him.

"Your name is Danielle?" he asked as we walked.

"Dani," I corrected.

"Well, Dani," said he, "are you familiar with the concept of the parallel universe?"

We had reached the other end of the hospital wing, and the doors on that end did not show me a vision of the apocalypse. They opened onto a small room that housed a desk, two folding chairs, and a small television set mounted on the wall. The desk was bare but for a small red notebook, spiral-bound and dog-eared, and a television remote. Koenma rounded the desk and sat down. I took the chair opposite him, wondering at the stark atmosphere and his state of shabby dress. I was used to seeing him surrounded by opulence and assistants, not wastelands and white walls.

"Yeah," I said, answering his earlier question. "It's like... well, it's like your world. Worlds. The Demon Plane, the Human World, the Spirit Realm... they exist on separate planes of reality but they… well, you know.”

Koenma, looking both bored and rehearsed, supplied the following: “The three worlds exist as a cohesive unit, all governed by the same laws of reality. They are balanced and whole, as connected as they are independent of one another." 

His words rang true. I had discussed the Yu Yu Hakusho universe many times in fan forums; most fans agreed upon a similar theory. "I think my world is parallel to yours, too, although I don't know in what way or anything,” I added. 

Koenma nodded. "You are correct, but only in part."

"Okay…?"

"The three worlds you just discussed—my worlds, I suppose—are what I like to call a 'set' of worlds, very closely intertwined and able to directly interact.” His expression grew pensive. “Your world is a strange one, one that interacts with my world but never, ever crosses over into it, like an organism that never finished budding off from its parent. I suppose that it is technically in my set. And there are more sets in existence than just ours."

I leaned forward, interested. My world was in the same world set as my favorite anime? Sweet. Sweet, that is, if I wasn't just dreaming the whole affair.

"As you said, worlds in a set operate under the same laws, case in point being my—our—set and its worlds. But different sets operate under different laws, and sets rarely interact because of this." He took a deep breath. "My—our—set recently... interacted with another set. You saw the result when you looked out the door."

My breath caught in my throat. "You mean we're in the last of the Spirit World?" I asked.

Koenma shook his head. "No. We're in the last of Human World. Spirit World..." He paused. "Spirit World has already fallen. Demon World is nigh but obliterated as well, and your world... well, it could be next."

"Why?"

Koenma picked up the TV remote. "Twenty years ago," he said, "a tome of spells called The Book of Beasts was stolen from the deepest vaults of Spirit World. It went missing and was recovered by my team of detectives."

"Yusuke?" I asked, and something struck me. _Holy crap... I'm twenty years too late to meet my favorite characters?_

"Yes," said Koenma. "We tried to take it back to Spirit World, but the Book had... attached itself to the Human World. The Book has a will of its own—one that proved difficult to sway."

I scowled at his hesitation. What did “attached itself” mean, and how could a book (no matter how powerful) have any sort of will? 

He did not appear to notice my displeasure. "While I was researching ways to put it back in its vault it was used to summon beings, called Beasts, from another universe. They turned on the summoner and killed every member of my detective team before anyone knew what was happening. Then the Beasts spread throughout the Human World, killing everyone. The human’s world was the first world to fall."

It took me a moment to process that the characters from my favorite anime were all dead. When the facts sank in, I felt… surprisingly little, actually. They were just animations, after all—paint on sheets of clear plastic played in rapid succession to simulate movement. The Koenma sitting in front of me begged to differ with that point, of course, but his presence didn’t much change my lack of emotion. Though the characters were, in a sense, alive to me, beings of character and depth and emotion, they had never been truly real. Grief was for the dead, not the drawn.

"So why were these Beast things summoned?" I asked, "and who summoned them?"

Koenma hesitated again. "I don't know," he said, treating every world like fragile crystal. "I was not there, which is why I am still alive."

I stared at him, expecting him to go on, but he said nothing. So, I said nothing. Then I finally asked: "So what does all of this have to do with me?"

Koenma pressed a button on the TV remote. The opening theme song and animation to Yu Yu Hakusho began to play. Seeing the flesh-and-blood Koenma so near to his 2D counterpart felt ridiculous, and I wondered vaguely how I had ever been able to stand staring at his comparably lifeless facsimile without cringing.

"After Spirit World fell to the Beasts," he said, "I began to research other worlds. I found your plan of existence connected very slightly to mine, where my world is a television series. Ever since then I have been waiting for someone with extensive knowledge of my world to die before their time." He waved a hand at me. "You, Dani. You died while saving another's life. You are what I have been waiting for."

That took me by surprise. "So I'm really dead?" I asked.

He looked regretful. "Yes, Dani. You are very much dead." 

I nodded, swallowed, and looked down at my feet. Koenma said nothing, allowing me the time to cope with this news—but as I sat there in silence, waiting, I experienced no tingling epiphany, no sense of loss, no grief. I felt nothing but blankness and a vague sense of, ‘Well, what now?’ I knew on an intellectual level that dying was sort of, you know, a big deal, but…

I said: "This news isn't hitting me as hard as I anticipated.”

Koenma shrugged. "It rarely does. Humans start in death. Going back is simply reverting to life's purest form—that of the spirit." He gestured at my leg. "You may have noticed that you are healed. Your spirit holds no deformity. Only your shell of a body possessed that inadequacy."

"Oh." I paused. "Did you know that today was my birthday?”

My non sequitur caused Koenma to frown. “I wasn’t.”

“Well, still, isn't this all a little unfair?” I asked. “I mean, I never got to talk to my parents or my friends or my _anyone_ before I went.”

"Death does not wait for one last phone call," Koenma said. "It would be waiting an awful lot if that were such." He smiled. "You died a hero, you know."

I snorted. “It’s not being a hero, it's being responsible. If I were getting raped, I'd expect the same from anyone." I paused. "You still haven't told me all of this Beast crap has to do with me."

He stared, intent on something I could not identify, and in his eyes flickered… was that sorrow?

"You know the characters of Yu Yu Hakusho, as it is called, very well, correct?" he said softly.

"I own the anime, the manga, and I critique fan fiction," I said without thinking. Why did Koenma look so sad?

"You know their pasts, their loved ones, their hopes..."

"Kuwabara loves kittens and Yukina," I said. "Yusuke: a good fight and Keiko. Hiei: Yukina and a purpose. Kurama: his family and his plants. I mean, it all goes deeper than that, but on an awfully shallow surface level…"

Koenma smiled. "I want to send you back in time and stop whoever summons the Beasts from doing so. I want you to mend the past to save the future."

I blinked at him. "Me?"

"You."

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Like, for sure?”

“I’m positive.”

I looked at him. I licked my lips and rocked back, then forward. Then I shook my head.

"Dude, I'm just a nobody!" I said. "I'm a cripple, I can't fight, and like I said, I'm no hero!"

"'It's not being a hero, it's being responsible,'" Koenma quoted.

I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue in his general direction.

"In the spirit of honesty—you're my only hope," Koenma said. ( _Obi-Wan Kenobi,_ I added in my head.) His face, his body, and his words reflected utter weariness. "Unless you go back in time and correct the events of twenty years ago, we're all doomed. Even your world is at stake."

That gave me pause—my world, my family, my best friend, all dead? 

"How likely is it that the Beasts... how likely is it that they'll find my world?" I asked, thinking hard.

"Very," said Koenma. He did not hesitate in the slightest. "It might take a hundred years, but..."

"Then I'll do it." I shrugged and smiled wryly, because Koenma looked surprised at my ready acquiescence. "I’ll get to meet my favorite characters, wont’ I? And besides, what would I do if I didn't run this little errand? I'd just be dead, right?"

Koenma’s eyes shone with bright hope. "Excellent," he said. "Excellent. Thank you."

I settled in for what I hoped would be a very thorough debriefing. "Can you tell me any more than you already have?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "The Beasts are the very essence of un-life. Physical blows won't hurt them, but strong emotions—they have the power to repel or even injure the Beasts. Find a way to harness positive emotions and you might be able to fight back."

A thought struck me. "So is there any reason why you haven't just gone back in time and destroyed the Book before someone uses it?"

"It can't be destroyed, and I personally can't time travel."

"Oh. Um... why not, if you don't mind my asking."

He chuckled. "Because that would be a paradox. I already exist in that time. The only reason I can send you back is because you don't."

"Oh. Well, cool, I guess." I stood up. "So what are we waiting for? Send me back in time, dude."

He nodded. "But first we need to find you a body," he said. "Yours is dead."

"Oh." Then, remembering all the bad fan fiction I had ever read, I asked: "Do I get some crazy-strong demon body with multicolored hair and sherbet eyes?"

He looked at me like I was crazy, which for all I knew I was. "Of course not!" he said. "Your body will be malleable, not ridiculous!”

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant, but that was when the room around us dissolved and disappeared.


	3. Use Somebody (or, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani is given a physical body. Koenma details her mission.

I found myself hovering at Koenma's side in midair. I squealed as I tried to keep the hem of my white robe closed, so the people fighting below me couldn't see my undressed midsection. It became apparent, however, that the people—well, demons—below us were unaware of our presence. I relaxed and let my robe fall as it would.

"There," Koenma said, pointing. We floated above a clearing, an open space amid a forest of mauve-leaved trees. Four fought below us, three against one. The three were brutishly large, blue, and horned like Japanese _oni_. The last, lonely fighter was tall, with spindly arms, no eyes, and a gaping hole for a mouth. Fingers like massive needles branched from the arms as big around as tree trunks. With a shrill shriek the creature darted forward to swipe at an _oni_ , but its claws barely scraped the _oni_ 's hide, and it skittered back like a frightened monkey.

"So do you want me to look like an ogre or Freddy Krueger's older, even more messed up brother?" I asked dryly.

"Sister. She's a girl." Koenma shot me a dark look tempered with pity, one I didn't understand. "Just watch."

The slender demon crouched low to the ground as the ogres advanced, and with another shriek a multitude of spines burst from its back. Its head twisted into something resembling an alligator's as its body filled out and grew larger, larger, _larger_ , scales erupting across its hide, and the lengthy fingers shortened into wickedly curved and powerfully thick claws.

"...a shape-shifter?" I managed to squeak as the now-spiked beast attacked an _oni_.

Koenma chuckled. "I said 'malleable,' didn't I?"

Despite the shape-shifter's formidable abilities, it soon fell to the three _oni_...but not before taking down two of them. The third, while the shifter was busy with the second, smashed his club down onto my future body's head. The shape-shifter screamed and limped away on elephantine legs, and the remaining _oni_ shouted after it but did not approach, bleeding as it was from a massive wound on its chest. Once the _oni_ trundled off into the forest, leaving his fallen comrades and dying enemy behind, Koenma grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down to where the shape-shifter lay.

It morphed before my eyes into something vaguely humanoid, with an expressionless face reminiscent of a _Noh_ mask. Its legs had too many joints and small, cat-like claws tipped its fingers, but its alien looks didn’t deter Koenma from touching it lightly on the cheek. A white, wispy light gathered beneath the prince's fingers, and with a heave he threw the creature's soul out of its body. He watched the soul fly through the air and into the ether, out of sight, with sorrowful eyes. I wondered at that. In light of the end of the world, a single shapeshifter’s soul seemed like a small price to pay.

He didn’t enlighten me as to the source of his sadness. "We'll take her body back with us," he said, and once again the world dissolved.

* * *

 

The hospital hallway appeared around us. The shape-shifter lay comatose on its back on one of the beds, alien and emaciated. Looking at it made my stomach churn. I didn't want to look like that creature, not really.

"I thought you said you couldn't time travel," I said, trying to distract myself.

Koenma laughed. "But I _didn't_ time travel—not really, anyway. I could explain the physics of it if you want, but I doubt they'll make much sense. Basically what we just did was view past events without touching them." He rubbed his hands together. "And this shape-shifter met very specific conditions that counteracted a potential paradox, which is why I could bring it back to use."

"And these...conditions. What were they, exactly? I'd hate to violate them."

"This shape-shifter was a recluse. This was the last time anyone ever saw it—and by _anyone_ I mean those ogres, two of which are dead and the last of which died a few days later from its injuries. Had we not stolen the shape-shifter's body, it would have decayed in the woods never to be seen again. We didn't interrupt up any important timelines by taking it."

"Gotcha, no messed up timelines." I lifted a hesitant hand and poked the dead body with a finger. It felt cold to the touch, skin clammy. "So I'm not gonna look like this, am I?"

"Of course not." Koenma held his hands (palms down, fingers spread) over the creature. The flesh quaked and glow with pale light, and with infinitesimal jerks it began to change. Brown hair sprouted from its bald head and the _Noh_ features softened from chalk-white into peachy, human skin. Lips curved into a pleasing bow-shape; the eyes morphed into long-lashed crescents set above high cheekbones. The limbs shortened and fleshed out, and with a start I realized who it looked like.

"Hey, that's me!" I cried, delighted, but then I blushed when I realized my new body was completely naked and forming rapidly. "Oi, close your eyes, I'm naked!"

Koenma rolled his eyes. "As if I didn't see you naked when I pulled you out of death. Your soul was more naked than this."

"I’m tempted to call you a pervert," I grumbled, but Koenma merely laughed.

"I'm the son of the lord of all creation. I think I've seen a naked body before."

My blush quieted (somewhat) but I stood stiffly as my limbs and torso took on their natural shape...well, almost natural shape. When Koenma pulled his hands away from my body, I saw he’d left my bad leg untouched, skin pink and muscles perfectly aligned.

It took me a minute to find the courage to say: "I want my leg the way it was.”

Koenma quirked an eyebrow. "But you can walk now," he said.

I hesitated, then hopped onto my spirit's undamaged foot. The limb held me up admirably, and with a smile I jumped around in place and jogged up and down the long, bed-lined hallway outside of Koenma’s office. I twirled, leaped, and danced to the tune of unheard music. Air whipped by me, beds passed in a blur, tile sending shocks quivering up my ankles and calves. The soles of my feet tingled like a million roving fireflies. Soon enough, however, the joy of movement died, squashed beneath the memory of the apocalyptic world outside. Slowly, I walked into the spirit king's presence.

"I love running, I think," I said as adrenaline thundered through my veins, "not that I can really tell since that was the first time I ever did it, but that leg is a part of me. As much as it hurts to let this go, I'm not sure I can be _me_ without it."

He looked unconvinced. “Why is that?”

“I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with my leg, and the way people treat me because of it,” I said, words slow but sincere. “A lot of who I am is framed around it. I don’t fit the traditional mold of the ideal human being, of what’s considered ‘normal’ or whatever, and people can get…mean. Mean, and rude, and offensive.” I chuckled, though the sound held little humor. “Society teaches us to value certain types of people, and like it or not, I’m not one of them. I’ve had to learn to value myself _in spite of_ what society dictates. And sometimes, it’s not easy to do that when people are constantly reminding me of how I don’t measure up to their stupid, arbitrary standards.” I stared down at my whole, healthy feet for a moment, contemplating how unusual they looked to me, but how ‘normal’ they must look to anyone else. “Changing my body would mean…giving in, I guess. Giving in to the pressure of what other people think I should look like.”

I sounded a lot braver than I felt when I inclined my head and said: “So in the end—screw ‘em. I value me, and they can fuck off with their artificial, arbitrary standards. I make my own standards.”

Koenma didn’t agree, or disagree, or even reply. He just stared at me, face carefully schooled into a neutral expression. Did he understand any of what I just said?

“It’s like if someone offered to laser off that stupid face tattoo of yours,” I said. “Polite society doesn’t like people with face tattoos, but if you had the choice, I doubt you'd get rid of your ink. You wouldn't be Koenma anymore."

He glowered at me and touched the tattoo with a finger. "It's not a stupid tattoo," he grumbled, "but I see your point." His hands extended again, and with a sinking sense of loss I watched as everything below my left kneecap twisted into its normal, stunted, pigeon-toed shape. My toes curled under like they always did, and my heel swelled into an oversized club of malformed bone. I almost—almost—stopped him when my foot's arch curved like a ballerina's, but as my lips quivered and my eyes filled with tears, I did my best to smile. A sense of loss unlike anything I had ever felt before threatened to tear me apart from the inside out, which was infinitely stupid, because hadn’t I just made a big, dumb speech about forging my own standards?

Koenma saw me crying, and once the process of shaping me was complete he reached out and wiped my tears away with his thumb. "Don't cry," he murmured. "Little hero."

The tears stopped, in their time, and his hands dropped from my cheeks.

"You're different from the way you are in the anime," I said thickly.

He looked away. "I know."

"Calmer. Less...I dunno, dumb."

He glared, but then his eyes went far away. "The last two decades have been...wearisome."

I stared at him while he stared at nothing, but then his eyes came back to mine.

"So," I said, "when I save the world and everything—"

"Confident, are we?"

"Shut up. Will you be like this or will you still stay dumb?"

He smiled, but there was pain there. "Dani... I don't know how to say this..."

 _That_ line never meant anything good. "Just say it."

"Saving the past won't save _me_."

I blinked at him.

" _My_ future is set in stone. You can only make a _new_ future for the _old_ me." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "By tampering with the past you will create a new future. The timeline will split into separate realities. My timeline will become isolated from the one you forge, trapping the Beasts here forever."

I didn't say anything. The tears started again, but these were for a different pain. I did not sob, I did not shake, I did not speak—I just cried, silent drops of saline pouring in twin rivers down my face.

Koenma’s features morphed into an expression of deep pain. "Don't cry for me," he said.

"Argentina," I replied, voice utterly calm. When Koenma looked mystified, I said: "'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' is a song where I come from."

"Oh." He fidgeted but settled on using the hem of his blue robe to wipe my face. The cloth felt scratchy and smelled like dust, and I wondered at the sensation. I lacked a body. Did spirits get dirty? Could they be hurt? It sure did feel like my heart was being torn into bits.

"So, I guess this is the part where you debrief me on my mission," I said, forcing the dryness from my voice.

He nodded and let the robe fall. "You need to go into the past, integrate yourself into the detectives' circle, and keep an eye out for the Book of Beasts and the person who summons the Beasts. And you can tell no one of your involvement with the future."

"Why? Wouldn't it just be easier to tell Ko—I mean, your past self to lock the Book away before anyone can have a chance to think about using it?"

Koenma of the Future shook his head. "It got attached to the Human World, remember? It couldn't be locked away. Genkai kept it at her temple and the detectives all guarded it in turn."

"You said it was stolen from the Spirit World earlier. By whom, and did they try to get it back?"

He ran his fingers through his hair and looked pensive and...wary. Like he was afraid of saying something he shouldn't.

"Let's see," he murmured. "A band of demons and humans stole the book originally, and they were led by a human medium who projected their ghost into the Spirit World and stole it straight out of the vault." He sucked his lips into his mouth, still thinking. "And yes, they did try to recover it once it was placed in Genkai's temple, but only after we tangled with them away from the temple a few times."

"Okay, cool. What was the medium's name?" I asked.

"I can't remember."

"Fat load of help you are."

A brown eye twitched. "I will remind you that I am a demigod."

"Eep!"

Laughter like rain poured into the hallway. "That's all I can tell you, really," he said to me, and he reached out to stroke the hair on my new body's head. "Tell you too much and you could change the timeline too drastically. I'll send you to Genkai's temple the day after the Book was returned. They'll be on high alert, so they'll find you." He shot me a dark look. "I don't think I have to warn you to be careful not to let my past self or anyone at all know about the future."

"I think I've seen enough sci-fi movies to know better than that," I said. Again, another thought struck me. How was I forgetting to ask questions like this? "What will my energy be like?"

"Hm?"

"You know, my energy. The detectives can tell humans from demons based on their energy signatures, right? So if my soul is human and my body is demon, won't they start asking awkward questions?"

I guess I said something stupid, because Koenma patted my head the way I would pat a child's. "And don't you think that's for the best?" he asked. "You'll be an enigma. Considering that you'll appear close on the heels of the Book's disappearance, they'll want to keep you around to be on the safe side of things. Otherwise they'd just send you to the city or the Demon World without a backward glance."

"And another thing," I snapped, not liking his condescension, "won't Hiei just be able to read my mind and see that I come from the future?"

That question brought on another head-pat; I swatted his hand away with a scowl.

"I thought of that already," Koenma said. "Give me _some_ credit. I'll be putting blocks on all of the important bits, like memories of the cartoon series Yu Yu Hakusho and your meeting with me. You won't need to worry."

OK, that did it. "I have _every_ right to worry,” I growled. “My neck's the one on the line, after all."

“Right,” he said. He sighed, eyes closing briefly. “Apologies.”

“Accepted.” I tossed my head from side to side. "Shit! All of this waiting's making me nervous." I jumped around, hopping first on one foot and then on the other in a silly little dance. "Anything else you need to tell me before I go?"

He shook his head. "Just stop the summoner before he gets to work," Koenma said. "If you don't, you'll have to find a way to push the Beasts back into the Book, and I don't know if that can even be done." He gestured at the corpse on the bed. "I'll need you to get into your body, now," he said. "It will mimic your human biology. You won’t have to worry about dealing with demonic organs."

Since I had seen Yusuke enter his body in the manga, I knew pretty much what to do. Climbing onto the bed was easy. I stood with my feet on either side of my body's ankles and more or less inserted my right foot into my new shell's. My spirit went into it with a pull that felt magnetic, and inch by inch I sat down in my new body from the hips up.

"Do I look like a centaur?" I joked as Koenma took my right hand and helped me slide my two torsos together. All but my right arm, right shoulder, and head remained outside of my body.

"Kind of," he said, squeezing my hand. "When you go in all the way you'll be put to sleep, so now is the time for final questions. Do you have any?"

I thought about it. "Just one."

"What is it?"

"Do you speak German?"

 _That_ sure took him by surprise. "Um, no?"

"Oh." I smiled. "Stirb nicht vor mir."

"Eh?"

I sighed. "It means 'don't die before I do.'" I met his eyes and held them with my own. "You think your world is lost, Koenma, but I don't think that at all. I'll find a way to beat back the Beasts and save you, I swear to...well, I'd swear to God, but you're right here in front of me, now aren't you?"

"Dani..."

"Yeah?"

"About your foot. Your body can shape-shift."

My heart skipped a beat, making use of a very overdone cliché. "Meaning...?"

"Someday, if you can get the hang of it—or even have the desire to do so—running again might not be out of the question."

He grinned, but his eyes went plate-round and the smile froze as I leaned up to kiss him square across the mouth. _Payback for all the embarrassment,_ I thought, _and payment for this body._ He didn't breathe until I pulled away.

"For luck," I chirped, and he went beet red with a splutter of: "Of course!"

I leaned back into my body, eyes closing as I absorbed the magnitude gift he had given me. _I can choose to run again, if I decide that’s what I want someday,_ I thought. Just as sleep closed over me I opened my flesh-and-blood eyes for the first and last time in that doomed world. All I could see were the tears upon his cheeks, and after that the look of hope shining in his eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I started uploading chapters of this work on Ao3 back in 2012. I can't remember why I stopped, but I guess I'm back now? Anyway. Over on FFnet, this story is 95 chapters long. I recently returned to it after several years' absence. The story should be finished around chapter 100. 
> 
> I'll be editing chapters of Future Talk for grammar/spelling/flow, but leaving the story content largely the same for the time being as I add new chapters here on Ao3. I think some parts of the story are hugely problematic/clunky/ineffective/meandering/weird, but...them's the breaks. A rewrite is in the works, but for now, here's the story as it originally appeared (for the most part). Thanks!


	4. You Don't Know Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani enters the world of Yu Yu Hakusho and meets her first canon character.

I woke up naked. No handy dandy not-quite-kimonos for me, no sir. Just a bed of moss growing on a boulder in the shade of a huge tree, sunlight playing across my skin in dapples made by the leaves overhead.

Sitting up, I winced when my head spun like a top on Hanukah. My palms slicked over the moss and came away stained, and with a laugh I held them to my face and inhaled the scent of green and growing things.

"It's good to be alive," I said, and I laughed from the sheer joy of feeling blood pumping through my veins. I scrambled to my feet, mindless of my nakedness, and—

And I fell when my deformed foot screamed in sudden pain.

The rock lay at an angle, so when I fell I slid down its sheer surface to land in a drift of leaves at its base. They cushioned my fall and kept me from hitting my foot again, but when I finally recovered from the jarring slide I had to grit my teeth and will the throbbing in my heel and toes to die down. Putting weight on that damned foot had hurt me since I was a child. I usually wore a metal brace and a special shoe that was specifically molded to the contours of my deformity, providing stability to an otherwise unstable limb. But without those items... well, I guess an apt analogy would be to shove an irregularly shaped glass statue at a sheet of inflexible metal. The statue (AKA, my foot) would break long before the metal would. Putting any sort of weight on that foot is excruciating.

"You couldn't drop me here with a _cane_ at the very freaking least?!" I screamed at the sky in frustration. A few frightened birds above me took flight. I ignored them and levered myself out of my leafy bed to sit on the boulder again, feet dangling over its side. I took stock of my surroundings (it seemed I was doing a lot of that, lately). There wasn't much to see, just massive, mossy trees and low-lying ferns. The rock was the only one I could locate, foliage dominating most of the landscape. I could tell that it was daytime from the amount of light filtering through the canopy above, but other than that I had no way of knowing what to expect—season, time of day, let alone location.

A perfect walking stick—a good, thick one with a crook at the end—presented itself after a minute, but it was at least thirty feet away, and over uneven terrain. The L-shaped head of it protruded out of a bush like a Meerkat scouting for danger. With a sigh I cannon-balled into the leaf pile and scrambled across the ground on my hands and knees. Roots thicker than my thigh and ferns taller than I was when I stood upright made me take detour after detour. I ended up getting lost once or twice in my quest for that walking stick. When that happened I pulled myself up the nearest tree to get a better vantage point, so I never misplaced my way entirely. Still, the process was a major pain and a half.

What sucked the most, however, was finding out that the 'perfect' walking stick was only half as tall as I needed it to be.

"Goddammit," I muttered as I used the stick to hobble forward. I had to bend over at the waist to use the thing, and despite the fact that no one was around I felt self-conscious about how... well, granny-like I looked. Not to mention I was still naked and basically mooning the woods every time I bent over. There was that. Still, despite my misgivings, I was grateful to walk and not crawl. My knees were caked with dirt, as were my hands and the tips of my unbound hair. The soil was moist from plentiful rainfall and the shade-giving canopy. Muddy, even.

Ugh. Perfect.

"Where the hell am I going, anyway?" I wondered aloud.

And so, hours of aimless wandering began. I couldn’t keep track of the passage of time, but I stopped often to rest and to look for better sticks. None, however, appeared. I stopped to sit down only when I found a huge tree fallen on its side. Good thing I found that thing; I needed a break. My throat was dry and my legs hurt, especially my left one. Not to mention my shoulder was killing me! I had put too much weight on it for far too long, walking hunched over like that.

The fallen tree reached about as high as my chest. I had haul myself atop the fallen trunk with my arms, and I did not relish the way the rough bark cut into my palms. I absently rubbed my sore shoulder once I got settled. Mom had always rubbed it for me when I came home from high school complaining of tight muscles, and my best friend, Lauren—who considered herself something of a massage artist—had enjoyed using me as a test subject for rubdowns. Who was she going to experiment on now that I was... well, dead? And my mom had had severe empty nest syndrome when I went off to college. What would finding out that her only child was dead do to her?

Panic gripped me for the first time since I learned of my demise. My breathing hitched, but I did not cry. Thoughts of Mom and Dad and Lauren and the rest of my family flashed through my head. The death of a child was not something any parent should have to live through.

The ironic thought of a comatose Atsuko at Yusuke's funeral popped into my head. Of all the animes to wind up in...

 _Good thing I checked the organ donor box when I got my driver's license,_ I thought, and I giggled madly. But this was no laughing matter. My parents were sure to be heartbroken. Miserable. Inconsolable.

Devastated.

The tears started, then. With a sob I pulled my good leg up to my chest, letting my malformed limb dangle over the edge of the tree as I pressed my face into my dirty knee. I don't know how long I cried, only that once I finished I felt no better than before.

 _Well,_ I thought, _at least my death's not for nothing. I'm saving the world. I think. Unless this is some sort of sick joke or weird fantasy, which it very well may be, but hey, I'm not taking any chances._

I sat in that position for a few minutes more, face pressed to my knee as I listened to birds chirp in the trees and leaves shiver on their branches. I was just about to jump down from my perch and keep walking when a sound that was not entirely natural drifted out of the woods at my back. Startled, I froze like a skittish rabbit at the sound of twigs breaking beneath a foot. Slowly, oh so slowly, I turned my head until I could see behind me out of only one eye, and that's when _he_ stepped out of the trees, looking for all the world like some storybook forest spirit.

I was not prepared to deal with one of the detectives, not so soon after my bout of crying, and the shock of seeing one _in the flesh_ made me slide as quietly as I could off of the tree in a desperate attempt to disappear for one last moment of solitude. I sat there, crouched in a ball on the far side of the trunk, willing him with all my might to go away.

 _Did he see me?_ I wondered as my heart thudded in my ears. How could he not hear such a loud sound? My hands, had they not been clutched to tightly around my legs, would have shaken like trees in a storm. _Oh please, please, don’t see me!_

On the other side of the tree I heard footsteps so soft I might have imagined them, followed by another snapping twig. But then I heard a low chuckle followed by a simple Japanese phrase that, for the life of me, I could not recognize, despite my status as a fourth-semester Japanese college student. Still, I knew by the tone that it was an amused—although undeniably firm—command, and that it was most likely directed at me (who else could it be for?). I did not move an inch at the sound of his voice and instead concentrated on the earth beneath me, the scent of nearby plants, the sound of birds, and the meager sunlight shining on my shoulders...

When I felt the chill of his shadow as he blocked out the sunshine, I looked up. He stood over me, red hair glowing like burnished garnet in the half-light of the forest. Too many fan fictions describe his eyes as 'emerald,' but they're darker than that. They are the green of forests and deep waters, mature leaves and jealousy. Flawless skin, somewhat feminine features, tall, broad-shouldered...

Kurama. He was undoubtedly Kurama.

It occurred to me, then, just how very naked I was. Before I could stifle it a small scream of shame and shock erupted from my mouth. I wrapped my arms around my chest, legs crossing in a futile attempt at modesty. Kurama jumped backward a step, but when he saw what I was trying to do he looked very pointedly above me and into the trees. His gaze wandered back a moment later, however, and with a start he gestured at my obviously deformed leg.

I understood the next phrase. He asked me if I was hurt.

I shook my head but could not find the words to tell him I was born this way. This was forever my issue with the Japanese language. Everything made sense on paper. It was when I had to speak that my vocabulary magically disappeared. A form of performance anxiety, I suppose. Freud would have a field day.

Kurama's eyes traveled to the stick at my side, then back to my leg. I saw the pieces click. He studied my very human face for many moments before shooting wary glances at the surrounding trees and shrubs.

 _Checking for accomplices, maybe?_ I thought, recalling that I had been sent to the day the Book had been recovered. _Oh, I get it. He's on edge, not taking any chances with the poor, defenseless human who just so handily appeared on the one day that helping someone might prove...fatal. Good old Kurama. Ever the strategist._

I seemed to pass whatever test he had administered because he then began to remove his jacket. For the first time I noticed how he was dressed: jeans, sneakers, and a button down white shirt beneath a long gray coat. It seemed too modern for him, somehow. The anime took fashion cues from the worst of the 1980s and 90s, after all.

He handed the coat to me while keeping his eyes averted. I took it from him with shaking hands.

"Can you... turn around?" I said in English.

He looked at me with a flash of sharp green. "Nani?"

I bit my lip as I struggled to stand. "You, turn..." I said in Japanese, finally remembering a phrase. Kurama complied immediately. I shrugged into the jacket and buttoned it up tight, noting how far down it fell on me. Kurama was much taller than I.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked in Japanese, and I replied: "Eto choto—a little."

I cleared my throat once I was dressed. Kurama turned back around to face me. Then his eyes narrowed. I couldn't fathom why until he said: "Ningen?"

 _He must have read my energy signature._ I hesitated, and his eyes narrowed even further, mere slits of green amid thick lashes.

"Youkai," he stated, simplifying his words for my benefit. "Ningen. Which?"

I shook my head. "I don't know," I said in his language. _Time to pique his interest. Watch me work, Future Jerk!_ "Both. Nothing. Everything."

His look of confusion was priceless. I took a mental snapshot of his face, sure I would never see this expression again. _Oh yeah, I am just_ so _devious._

"Nihonjin desu ka?" he asked, inquiring if I was Japanese.

"Iie, Amerikajin desu," I replied, but when he looked mystified I frowned. "Igirisu desu?" No response. "Australia desu? South Africa desu? Scotland desu? Friggin' _Canada_ desu?" I named every English speaking country I could think of (and most of the European continent besides) but the reportedly brainy demon just stared at me like I was insane. Even when I said "Eego desu," meaning 'English language,' he just looked at me without understanding.

 _What the hell? Do none of those countries exist here?_ I thought about it for a moment, applying logic to the situation. _Well, in the anime all the demons spoke Japanese, so I guess I have to assume that it's one of the only languages in this world set. Huh. I always thought it was weird that the demons spoke Yusuke's language right off the bat. And even Yomi lives in a Japanese-style house... but still, this is totally not what I was expecting._

Kurama's puzzled frown smoothed into a look of bland pleasantness. "Come," he said, gesturing for me to follow him. I hobbled forward on my makeshift cane. At that, he frowned again and stopped me. He pointed at my stick.

"My cane?” I said. I handed it to him as I balanced on my good foot, muttering all the while in English. “Sure, just takes the cripple’s cane. What a gentleman. You’re just so nice.”

"Arigatou," he said as he explored the object with his fingers. Then the wood twisted and shook and extended into a more-compatible-with-my-body length. He held it up to me for comparison purposes and made a few adjustments. I stared at the cane with an open mouth and took it from him without a word when he finally handed it back to me.

"Kurama desu," he said suddenly, and then he asked for my name. "Onamae wa nan desuka?"

I gaped like a fish. "Danielle desu!" I finally choked out.

His perfect brow furrowed. "Da-ni-e-ru?"

"Da-ni," I amended. I traced the hiragana characters in the air with a fingertip. "Da-ni."

"Dah-ni," he repeated, putting equal stress on both syllables and softening the vowel sound of the first syllable. “Dah-ni. Donny.” The effect was strange, but my Japanese born-and-bred teacher had equal trouble with my name's pronunciation. And since this Kurama had no English background, what more could I expect?

Remembering my manners, I bowed as well as I could from the waist. "Hajimemashite, Kurama san. Dozo yoroshiku. Onegaishimasu."

He returned the bow with an amused smile and parroted the phrases back at me. But then, with a meaningful glance in another direction, he motioned for me to follow him deeper into the forest.

And I, not knowing what else to do, limped along after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March, 2016:  
> Cleaned up grammar and spelling (confused “pique” with “peak” in the original draft; ugh!). Events are otherwise unchanged. MANY THANKS to Ladyillusion and Procrastilove, who reviewed/left kudos since last time. You two rock!  
> Chapter title credits go to Ben Folds/Regina Spektor ("You Don't Know Me").
> 
> January 2010:  
> And now we have Kurama, everyone's favorite fox demon! You can bet your bananas they're heading for the temple next, but what will happen there? Will they let her stay? Will they send Dani someplace far away? And who will she meet when she gets there? Stay tuned to find out!


End file.
